All of those things are important, as they are all pronunciations that occur in different words. They're not helpful, they're essential. However, you're going to run into problems learning the kanji on their own, because kanji need context. Whether the pronunciation is ge or ka (or sa or kuda or shita) depends on the word and the sentence, and sometimes it's even something different altogether (see 下手 for example).

You're going to get confused learning them on their own.

But I wouldn't memorize any of them, personally. I'd learn words and contexts for those words. If you're not going to do that, then yes, you need to memorize them all, and you'll still mess up as long as you don't know the words the kanji are used in.

Whether it's the answer you want or not is irrelevant. It's the answer you need.

Shita, sagaru, sageru and kudasaru are all words. Ka and ge are merely parts of words. Until you can associate meanings to the words (and no, the base meaning of the kanji isn't sufficient) memorizing a bunch of readings really won't help - they won't stick in your memory that well. You need context to attach the kanji to.

And instead of a human machine giving me the answers that I don't want, I want a real answer

What answers -do- you want?

"Oh, it's OK, just learn one reading and move on. It'll be FINE!"

That work for you? Do you really intend to just go through a kanji reference and memorize all the readings and possible meanings of each individual character? If so, then you didn't need to come here and ask anything. Just keep plugging away, do what you do best.

If you'd like to progress with Japanese, come back later and don't brush off the advice of people who know better than you do.

richvh wrote:Whether it's the answer you want or not is irrelevant. It's the answer you need.

Shita, sagaru, sageru and kudasaru are all words. Ka and ge are merely parts of words. Until you can associate meanings to the words (and no, the base meaning of the kanji isn't sufficient) memorizing a bunch of readings really won't help - they won't stick in your memory that well. You need context to attach the kanji to.

Learn words, not kanji.

basically, you just gave me an answer.. could have done that before eh?

Even if you manage to go through that entire book, and memorize all the readings for all the kanji (I'd bet you get bored and quit first) you're not going to be able to read a sentence of Japanese, because that book won't teach you any grammar. Japanese is not a language you can just look up every word in a dictionary and understand the sentence; you have to know how the particles modify the parts of the sentence, and how the way the verbs (and adjectives!) are conjugated change their meaning.

Wow, you come off as pretty arrogant there. If your way of learning is so great, why are you her asking us questions? Do you really want our help, or are you just here to whine about your problems and hope we will commiserate with you? Sorry, your problem is your method.

This is a learning forum, not a give you the answers you want to hear forum. You are stepping in common land mine that many new students step on, we are telling you to avoid it. If you insist on stepping on it again, that will only hurt you, no matter what crazy advice you get to the contrary.

Kanji books are for people that already know a large vocabulary and grammar. If you already know this then you can benefit from the kanji book. Since you don't, otherwise you wouldn't be confused, you should find a Japanese textbook that utilizes kanji and learn from it instead.

There's a reason we give this advice over and over. Because it works.

Fielle, thank you. That's just what I was looking for, I will try my best, thanks a lot dude.

And how exactly do you expect to benefit from Fielle's advice without following Rich's? Fielle gave you the same advice.

And if your way is stupid, I think we have an obligation to point it out and try to keep you from doing it.

Sorry to be so blunt, but I really hate seeing people shooting themselves in the foot that way. I know I've done it a lot. Sometimes it's better to learn things the hard way, but kanji aren't something to screw around with in that fashion. Learning kanji is easily the most demotivating task in studying the Japanese language if you do it wrong -- and you really are doing it wrong -- and you'll just get turned off from the language and never want to come back to it.

(Reading further into the thread, I see Yudan already said what I'm saying here, only more succinctly, but I'll keep this post anyway because the point really is that important.)